It’s Friday, time to learn something while enjoying this nice little animation from the Royal Institute. Produced by Ed Prosser, directed and animated byRosanna Wan, with sound design by Marian Mentrup this 4 minute short teaches about the laws of symmetry in nature and physics. You’ll learn about Emmy Noether’s theory that proves the need for symmetry and much more. Narrated by Tara Shears, this is an easy to follow piece with a great look and a nice rhythm to it. The weekend is here, get lost in a little bit of physics.
Science
James Lovelock’s Tool Kit For The Future
Well this will definitely be going into the personal library. When I was a kid this is the kind of book I would spend hours reading and re-reading, especially if it was filled with gorgeous illustrations like this one is. ” The big picture James Lovelock’s tool kit for the future.” By Taschen is illustrated by Jack Hudson, a British illustrator with a particular interest in scientific subjects and the interaction of macro and micro scales, and features contributions by quantum physicist Lisa Randall, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson, and Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel. The book was Conceived by James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia theory, this illustrated essay collection brings together an all-star lineup of thinkers and scientists to offer essential understanding about who we are, how we live, and where we might be going.
Think Ink.
Designers that work with print, hopefully think about ink on a regular basis. Ink is the primary vehicle used to complete your printed vision. No matter what your work looks like on screen, the way it is printed, the paper it’s printed on, and the quality of the ink used will impact the final outcome. The video below isn’t new. It actually came out about 6 years ago, but it’s worth watching.
This short film by The Printing Ink Company in Canada takes you through the process, techniques and craft of ink creation. That’s right, the “Craft”, because making ink is a complex process requiring skills and experience to get the best results. The Printing Ink Company shares their methods used to create every color in the PANTONE spectrum and beyond. The challenges they face getting it right, and the attention to detail they put into making every can of ink.
This is a must watch for art students, designers and everyone else in the business that is designing printed materials.
Connected Worlds, Design I/O, and open Frameworks.
I love this stuff. What a great blend of technology, design, animation, and art. In a 3000 square foot space in the New York Hall of Science there is an immersive installation that allows children to directly interact with the space. Composed of six interactive ecosystems spread across the walls of the great hall, children are encouraged to use both physical items in the space as well as interact with the projected digital components. All of the surfaces are interactive and engaging.
Connected Worlds was designed to encourage children to think about sustainability and how all of these natural systems are interlinked, where local action on the environment may have global consequences later on. Children work with a fixed amount of water in the system and have to work together to manage and distribute the water across the different environments. Clouds return water from the environments to the waterfall which releases water to the floor when it rains.
Children can use physical logs to divert water flowing across the floor from the waterfall into the different environments, where they can then use their hands to plant seeds. As the different environments bloom, creatures appear based on the health of the environment and the type of plants growing in it. If multiple environments are healthy creatures will migrate between them causing interesting chain reactions of behaviors.
The immersive experience was built using openFrameworks an open source creative coding toolkit. The project was conceived and developed by Design I/O with the New York Hall of Science by Emily Gobeille, Theo Watson and Nicholas Hardeman. Additional design and animation work was produced Josh Goodrich and game consultation by Zach Gage. Sound Design by MOST Original Soundtracks.
The first video below shows the space in action. The second video is the behind the scenes / making of video for those of you that want to geek out on how they pulled this off.
Modular 4 